The stillness of the house is like a pond in a winter’s morning. It beckons me to sit and just listen to the tick of the clock like a cricket in the weeds. Instead of leaping up and jumping in, I sat down and napped in the yawning silence. I haven’t had time to myself in a week and a half.

I organized my linen closet yesterday because I asked for new towels for Christmas. I filled three trash bags full of stuff I don’t need anymore or maybe never needed. A white matelasse bedspread I’ll never use as well as old towels and curtains. The new year’s purge has begun and halted.

I am standing slightly timid at the possibility to actually create a year that I want to live instead of shoving myself through the motions of a year I think I Ought to be living. I want a year of coulds instead of shoulds. When I hear the sole bird singing in the morning hours, he is singing for the possibilities.

Guided by my word for 2019, Focus, I will sift through my life’s leftover belongings purposefully searching for my possibilities and ditching the forced goals of 2018. I will acknowledge my fears and query my worries and entertain my what ifs. And I will slather myself with heaps of compassion during the process.

I am considering how I want my blog to serve me instead of me being enslaved by it. So excuse the tardiness of my post today as I gather and test my thoughts.

And If you enjoyed what you read, subscribe, via the subscription box in the sidebar, to my thrice weekly posts via your emailbox. And visit me on Instagram to see my daily pictures, friend me or like my page on Facebook. Or come find me on Twitter or Pinterest too. I am always practicing Intentional Intouchness so chat at me please. I live for conversations.

And If you enjoyed what you read, subscribe, via the subscription box in the sidebar, to my thrice weekly posts via your emailbox. And visit me on Instagram to see my daily pictures, friend me or like my page on Facebook. Or come find me on Twitter or Pinterest too. I am always practicing Intentional Intouchness so chat at me please. I live for conversations.

So many shoulds coming at us daily. Other people’s recipes for our lives flooding our heads. The shoulds of womanhood, motherhood, parenthood, successful people, healthy people, and intelligent people. Of good daughters and good citizens and good Christians.

Oh you know what the shoulds sound like. I should have a clean house, a balanced diet, and spiritual practice. I should have polite children, a health insurance plan, and an IRA account. Everywhere I turn, there is some spoken, or unspoken rule that tells me what I should be, say, and know. And I find it exhausting.

As former small people, we have a hard time doing what we are told we should do, even when the should comes from ourselves. So there we are with our own laundry list of shoulds and then we get the world adding to it. We should be skinny, we should be saving, and we should be up on current events.

But in the end, what we truly think is what matters. Do we trust ourselves to say, “No thank you, I don’t need to worry about being skinnier with the holidays coming up.” Or, “No thank you, I don’t care to worry about decorating the outside of my house when I need to clean the kitchen floor today.” It’s always our choice to decide what matters to us.

We get to throw out the shoulds that do not serve us and listen hard to the coulds that are in or hearts. We really should go see that movie before it leaves the theater but we feel like staying home and watching a movie on our own couch instead. Or, we really should finish reading the library book due tomorrow but instead we feel like cooking brownies with our kids.

What shoulds are you holding on to that you may be able to let go of for the holiday season? If you must, schedule your number one in your calendar and then gift yourself with a schedule of coulds instead.

And If you enjoyed what you read, subscribe, via the subscription box in the sidebar, to my thrice weekly posts via your emailbox. And visit me on Instagram to see my daily pictures, friend me or like my page on Facebook. Or come find me on Twitter or Pinterest too. I am always practicing Intentional Intouchness so chat at me please. I live for conversations.

I have written ad nauseam about the amazing gift we have to choose our lives. We get to choose our lifestyles and who we call community. We get to choose what we believe and how we practice what we believe, where we spend our money and where we don’t. And while it’s a giddy freedom to know that our choices are truly up to us, it is also daunting and possibly terrifying.

The potential to make a mistake is forever your company. I have a “first marriage”. There were people we hired to work on our house who we shouldn’t have. There is an amount of debt rolled into my mortgage for the antiques and gift shop that I failed to succeed with.

But there are also bits and pieces of those failed choices that made me who I am. Disappointments that shaped me into the person I am. Choices that will lead me to better choices, to streamlining my choice making processes. And to be a little more aware of when my inner voice tells me to beware.

If I believe that failure lays the path to success then the faith in this is the very tool I need to get through to the success. That and the knowledge that failure is a circumstance and not something you are. Separating myself from the outcomes of the my choices may be the key to choosing to fail more. And aspiring to more successes than just keeping safe.

What is your outlook today on the success of your life? Are you choosing to risk or staying safe within a life recipe that doesn’t fit you?

And If you enjoyed what you read, subscribe, via the subscription box in the sidebar, to my thrice weekly posts via your emailbox. And visit me on Instagram to see my daily pictures, friend me or like my page on Facebook. Or come find me on Twitter or Pinterest too. I am always practicing Intentional Intouchness so chat at me please. I live for conversations.

I woke up this morning doubting my ability to accurately decide if I was living a good life. “Is my life a problem or a pleasure”, I asked myself. I questioned my decision on this day being a good one or a bad one because I truly hadn’t lived any of it yet. Yet, how often do my thoughts on my life then immediately lead to feelings about my life, good or bad?

What we focus on, be it the things that we need to “fix” or the things that we’re grateful for, determines our feelings about our lives. How we feel about our life is all we have to decide if we like living them or not. Having the “trappings” of a good life, like wealth or social status, does not guarantee that inside, people still don’t feel good about their lives.

But is I decide that I am living a charmed life, which I surely am, and that I have it pretty good today, then I am able to smile and appreciate my day more and be grateful for the pleasure of living this lie. How many times do you see other people grumbling and ungrateful and you think, “Don’ t they know how lucky they are?” That’s all of us. Each of us able to enjoy and be grateful for our gifts every day, not just at Christmas. A half full day awaits you.

And If you enjoyed what you read, subscribe, via the subscription box in the sidebar, to my thrice weekly posts via your emailbox. And visit me on Instagram to see my daily pictures, friend me or like my page on Facebook. Or come find me on Twitter or Pinterest too. I am always practicing Intentional Intouchness so chat at me please. I live for conversations.

My name is Shalagh Hogan, pronounced Shay-La. I'm the mother of a teen, a six year-old, and I turned 52 this year. This blog was born in 2011 and my hope and joy as a writer, an artist, and an uber-creative, is that by sharing my journey of self-discovery, others will gain inspiration and permission for their own journeys.

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